In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,36

odd to them. “They didn’t have arches,” Carl says. “I’ve seen arches on my footprints at the beach. These ones were flat-footed. One set of tracks was really narrow. And the heels on the other set seemed wider than normal.”

Knowing the long history of Sasquatch sightings near the lake, the group worried that a Bigfoot mother with kids might be lurking somewhere nearby and decided to get out of the area. But before doing so, they left a green apple on the log as a friendly offering.

I still think, mostly, that human children made the footprints during an anomalous jaunt through the bush and mud, and that Beth and Carl, already believers in Sasquatch, are wrongly attributing them to the animals.

But the tracks are odd-looking—especially the long, narrow set. Could they be tracks of juvenile Thla’thlas? The more I think about it, the more attractive this idea becomes.

The stories of monsters, the fairy-tale landscapes, and the novelty of travel mix to form an intoxicating cocktail. With each story I come across, I find myself more seduced by the mystery. The thrill of the chase is a high. And I want something to show for it. I’m falling prey to the addiction that has ensnared Sasquatch hunters and investigators like quicksand, condemning them to states of obsession that have at times consumed entire lives—sometimes at the expense of marriages and livelihoods.

Hoping to get insight into the tracks at Old Town, I email my photos and a précis of the situation to John Bindernagel in Courtenay. He promptly writes back:

Hi John,

Many thanks for the photos and commentary.

I find these tracks interesting. I can see that the big-name Sasquatch researchers, guys like Jeff Meldrum and Cliff Barackman, would not be very interested in these as I’ve tried similar ones on them before.

On their own, these photos would be a hard sell as Sasquatch tracks—since even the more common larger broader ones are routinely rejected. I guess I would put them on my metaphorical shelf for now, awaiting evidence which more closely approximates to Sasquatch tracks as we think we know them.

I recently spent a week in western Alberta being pressured by another researcher to agree that night bird calls we heard in the field were not actually northern Saw-whet owl calls, but Sasquatch whistles; that fallen saplings hung up in other trees were not natural deadfall but Sasquatch-related; and that indistinct impressions in the moss were Sasquatch tracks.

So I am feeling worn down and a bit depressed as I wish to affirm evidence but am not always able to do so.

Sorry not to be more helpful.

Thanks and all the best,

John

Later that day, Alvina tells me she’s received a phone call from someone working at the Heiltsuk government offices, asking about me.

“They want you to go down there tomorrow,” she says. “They wanna talk to you.”

“Talk to me?” I ask, concerned. “About what?”

“Dunno,” she says unconvincingly, disappearing around the corner and heading down the stairs.

When I arrive at the offices the next day, I’m told to take a seat at a large conference table and wait. All around are posters and charts showing the locations of old village sites and various ongoing research projects. I am told that the office is the natural- and cultural-resources arm of the Heiltsuk government.

Twenty minutes later I’m greeted by three people, a man and two women, and am politely asked to step inside a small office. I recognize the man as the older gentleman who had hosted the potlatch. I don’t know the two people with him: a younger woman and an older lady.

We take a seat in the cramped office. Each of my hosts, with pen unsheathed and notebook at the ready, has a look of displeasure bordering on grimness. I feel cornered and quickly realize something’s hugely amiss. I have the awkward, uncomfortable sense that I’ve done something wrong. There is a long pause, before the gentleman, seated next to me, kicks off the proceeding.

“I heard you were taking notes and photos at my potlatch,” he says, with a deepening frown, eyes cast downward. The two others look sternly at me.

“I did take some pictures,” I say. “A lot of people did.”

“There were parts of the potlatch that we asked people not to photograph or film,” the man continues. “And I’m worried you captured those. People came to me concerned, asking who you were. I didn’t know what to tell them. It was humiliating.”

I feel a stab of commiseration and a pang of anxiety. In the